stating the general rule that the work product or investigative files of the district attorney, law enforcement agencies, or others assisting in the preparation of the case are not open to discovery
How later courts described this case
- stating the general rule that the work product or investigative files of the district attorney, law enforcement agencies, or others assisting in the preparation of the case are not open to discovery
- stating that where “there is no positive evidence of a lesser offense[,] . . . the jury need only decide whether [the] defendant was the perpetrator of the crime charged” (citation omitted)
- holding defendant’s proffered evidence to be irrelevant because “it fail[ed] to point to a specific other person as the perpetrator of the crime with which defendant is charged”
- “Assuming arguendo that defendant’s proffered evidence was erroneously excluded, . . . [d]efendant has not carried his burden of showing a ‘reasonable possibility that, had the error in question not been committed, a different result would have been reached at the trial.’ ” (quoting N.C.G.S. § 15A-1443(a) (1988))
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Justice MITCHELL
concurring in result.
The majority holds that the trial court properly refused to instruct on the lesser offense of involuntary manslaughter, because *583 there was no evidence of involuntary manslaughter. For reasons which I have fully discussed in my dissenting opinion in State v. Thomas, 325 N.C. 583 , 386 S.E.2d 555 (1989), involuntary manslaughter is not a lesser included offense of first-degree murder, when, as here, first-degree murder is submitted to the jury based solely upon the felony murder theory; this is true without regard to what the evidence may tend to show. Because the trial court — for whatever reason — permitted this case to go to the jury for its determination of whether the defendant was guilty of first-degree murder only under the felony murder theory, no instruction on lesser homicide offenses would have been proper. I concur only in the result reached by the majority.
Justice WEBB joins in this concurring opinion.